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Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Imagine if you woke up one morning and it had all rolled back. Your wife no longer had a job or even interest in having a job. She was at home patiently waiting for orders from you. Instead of having her own thoughts or plans or ideas, she lived only to serve and support you. All of which is to say that she was very, very dependent upon you. She did little or nothing without your explicit or at least tacit consent, down to the smallest activity. And imagine that your daughters, if they were not married already to men who ruled their lives, then now they are underpaid and disrespected nurses or elementary school teachers. You may have a daughter off at college but, by her own admission, she’s only there to get her “Mrs” degree. Your daughters, in fact all of your children, are as dependent upon you as your wife. They do little on their own without seeking first your approval. For every decision in the family, whether great or small, you must make it alone. You might talk to some other men about it or maybe look in the scriptures for some guidance—books written by men for men—but patriarchy demands that you make every decision and that every decision be flawless. This is the world where father must know what is best in every situation and all the time and for everyone involved. This is patriarchy, and it puts an impossible demand and weight on men while it robs women and other powerless people of participation and of a full voice in making decisions.

1. People don't choose to be gay, to be only sexually attracted to people of their same sex.
2. No one, I believe, would make that choice, since it is so socially frowned upon and since it does not lend itself to the advantages (of which there are many!) of heterosexual marriage.
3. Since they don't choose it, and since it is really born in them, I believe the gay people I know when they say that they do not feel that their attraction is wrong or a sin.
4. Mormons typically think that such attraction is inherently wrong and against God's plan, while gay people, especially gay Mormons, do not believe that their attraction is wrong or sinful.
5. Mormons see heterosexual attraction as normal, natural, and even God-given.
6. I believe gay Mormons when they say that they believe that their homosexual attraction is normal, natural, and God-given for them.
7. Homosexual marriage seems to interrupt God's plan, since such couples cannot have children in the traditional manner.